14

The streets of lower Manhattan were teeming with New Yorkers who had seeped out of their apartments at the first hint of sunshine. Most of them, the Weeder noticed, were going around in twos; he couldn’t help thinking that from a historical point of view, it was curious that the basic social unit of Western civilization had become the couple. In older, more heroic times, men had been able to validate their maleness in ways that had nothing to do with women: hunting, fighting, voyages of exploration, or in Nate’s case, confronting death with courage. Nowadays it appeared as if most men validated their maleness by seducing women. Which meant that no matter how the deed was dressed up, seduction was essentially a self-serving activity. The women the Weeder had been intimate with in his life—his ex-wife for one, the half dozen or so who had come before and after her also—seemed to have sensed this; seemed to have held part of themselves back, as if the principal sentiment they had for the men in their lives was resentment.

It was an odd trend of thought for a sunny Sunday morning. Were the Weeder’s anonymous love letters to Wanamaker his way of getting back at him, seventeen years after the fact? Or was there more to it than met the eye? Was the Weeder—laboring away in his SoHo cubbyhole on a project far from the mainstreams of history, and notably unsuccessful in establishing long-lasting relationships with the women in his life—was he validating his maleness by jousting in the modern manner with an old foe? Was he taking out his frustrations on someone who was doing roughly the same thing he was doing, and for the same employer? Or as Admiral Toothacher used to say when he outlined alternative scenarios in his course on the fundamentals of intelligence methodology: All of the above, or none of the above, or any combination thereof.

In short: Whose truth? Which truth?

The Weeder was still mining this vein of thought as he keyed his computer and brought the menu up onto his screen. It had been a slow night. There was an interesting item in the Chinese Bin; Savinkov had discovered that the FBI had staked out a dead letter drop of his behind the radiator in the men’s room at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The Weeder weighed the information for a moment, decided not to disseminate it. The last thing in the world he wanted was for the FBI to call off the stakeout. Savinkov might notice the stakeout had been canceled and conclude that the FBI knew that he knew the dead drop had been compromised, at which point Savinkov, an old pro, would suspect his conversations were being overheard.

The Weeder punched another code into his computer, calling up the new material in Farmer’s Almanac. There were pinpoints of light on the screen. Letters appeared. Words began to coalesce into phrases, sentences.

“Who? Who? Who? … Who?”

“Why? Why? … Why? Why?”

“Me? Why would I do it?”

“… any of your people … qualms, moral or operational.”

“… not the answer.”

“Or all of the above. Or none … Or any combination …”

The Weeder smiled. That would be Admiral Toothacher speaking.

“He knows the code name …”

“He knows the date …”

“… curiouser and curiouser.”

There was a pause as the computer scanned. The Weeder was hardly aware of the whirring of the tapes coming from behind the partition. More words began to appear on the screen.

“… target …”

“… center at Kabir … an American five-megawatt …”

“… ninety-three percent enriched uranium … enough for a …”

“Laser enrichment tech …”

“… separate weapon-grade uranium from ordinary …”

“…or move to plutonium two thirty-nine …”

“… Nagasaki-type bomb …”

“… Nagasaki-type explosion …”